


open all night.

by outpastthemoat



Series: new testament [just more of the same 'verse] [6]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Diners, Fallen!Castiel, First Date, Fluff, Human!Castiel - Freeform, M/M, Post-Purgatory, Post-Series, Schmoop, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-15
Updated: 2013-02-15
Packaged: 2017-11-29 09:45:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,012
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/685560
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/outpastthemoat/pseuds/outpastthemoat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I owe you a burger,” Cas says, and for all Cas’s tone is measured, steady as usual, there’s a hint of something else there, too.  Dean looks over in time to catch a smile flicker across Cas’s face, and yeah, it’s half-past midnight and neither one of them has gotten much sleep in the past three days and they’re the only ones stupid enough to be out on the highway tonight in this weather, but it looks like he's about to get that date with Cas, after all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	open all night.

 

  
  _But the light of the moon leads the way_  
 _Towards the morning and the sun_  
 _The sun’s well on the way too soon to know_  
 _And oh my god, whatever, ect._

Dean's not sure when the music stopped.

He must've dozed off despite himself, he thinks, and at some point Cas must've popped Zeppelin II out of the cassette player and turned off the radio, leaving nothing but the steady sound of the windshield wipers and the rain beating back against the roof.

Dean shakes himself back to alertness, glances over at Cas.  He's driving one-handedly, exactly the way Dean's always told him not to drive, his other arm propped up on the Impala's armrest.  Head lights flicker across his face, alternately highlighting and casting the sharp angles of his neat-boned features into shadow.

Cas looks weary; it might be the darkness, but Dean's sure those are dark circles under his eyes, and he blinks slowly, as though the drops of rain rolling down the windows have blown straight into his lashes.  He looks like he's only minutes away from dropping into a dreamless slumber, driver's seat or not, and yeah, Dean decides, it’s time for a break.

Dean reaches across the bucket seat to pluck the sunglasses off Cas’s head.  Everything’s so bright, Cas had said, after he’d fallen, squinting against the glare of the highway on that long first trip back to Sioux Falls, and Dean had ransacked the glove box for that old pair of sunglasses then.  Cas hasn't taken them off his person since.

“I’ll buy you a coffee,” he says to Cas, who favors him with a slow nod of acknowledgement.  "Next place we pass.  We never stopped for dinner," he adds, and Cas glances over at him, his gaze too sharp to pass for casual. 

“I owe you a burger,” Cas says, and for all Cas’s tone is measured, steady as usual, there’s a hint of something else there, too.  Dean looks over in time to catch a smile flicker across Cas’s face, and yeah, it’s half-past midnight and neither one of them has gotten much sleep in the past three days and they’re the only ones stupid enough to be out on the highway tonight in this weather, but it looks like he's about to get that date with Cas, after all.

Cas finds a diner that'll stay open all night, with one lone waitress, all thin wrists and long arms, whose long blonde hair spills down from a loose bun.

She glances over her shoulder towards the the kitchen and says, apologetic, "Hope you're not in a hurry."

Dean offers her a tired smile and only says, "We can wait," and orders them both coffee while Cas takes his time in the bathroom.

Cas returns, water dripping from the ends of his hair, and they're both quiet as they drink down that essential first cup of coffee, which isn’t surprising, really; Cas has never been much of a talker, Dean knows, and Dean is just as often glad of their companionable silences as he is the rare moments when Cas opens his mouth and actually talks.  Some things never do change, after all: Cas is still a man of few words.

So Dean watches the rain on the other side of the window, waits for Cas to warm up.  Cas perks up somewhere in the middle of his second cup of coffee, and Dean watches him, too, watches the way his eyebrows arch, sliding up under the hair falling in his eyes as he takes measured sips from his chipped ceramic mug, careful not to spill, and just as always he watches Cas's face, eyes downcast, his gaze falling on the plastic menu, the way he glances up through his eyelashes. 

"Do you know what you want?" Cas asks.

"Yeah," Dean says, flipping over the menu.  "Is a quarter to one too late for a steak?"

"No," Cas tells him, regards Dean gravely from behind his cup of coffee. "But I believe I only promised you a burger," he says, and Dean's still laughing as the waitress, bless her, writes down their order of two burgers, two fries, one water, one diet Coke.

It's different and it's still the same, more or less, sitting across another vinyl-table top from Cas; the only real difference is that Cas is staring down at the table instead of at Dean, shredding the paper wrapper of his straw with quick, nervous fingers, and Dean can't quite look him in the eye or quit making a mess of the sugar packets.  

And Dean doesn’t want to talk about the case, doesn’t want to talk about the nest of vamps they'd ganked only a few hours ago, doesn't want to talk about anything in particular. Dean wants to talk about how glad he’ll be to get back home after this, how nice it'll be to sleep in his own bed, but he doesn’t know what Cas will say to that, and he’s hesitant to ask.

Twenty minutes, the waitress had said about their order, and Dean's resigned himself to waiting for dinner but his fingers crawl, itching for something to do, something to ease this too-still, too-quiet atmosphere.  Something to get Cas to look at him, maybe.

"Got a pen?" he asks, and Cas gives him a curious look but shuffled through his pockets, eventually producing a Bic with a chewed-off tip, and Dean grabs a napkin.  "You ever play tic-tac-toe?”

“No,’ Cas answers, and when he hands Dean the pen, the paper shreds flutter into the air around them.  

“Here, let me show you,” Dean says, and suddenly things aren't quite as strange anymore.   

Cas wins, of course, for the same reason that Dean always has him plan their tactics and strategies for a hunt, and Cas wins the second, third, fourth game in row.

"You need a handicap," he says to Cas.  "It's not like I can cheat here, you know. You could let me win  _one_ game, smart-ass."

Cas looks impressively unconcerned with Dean's ego.  "Why would I do that?" he asks, and when Dean reaches over to snatch the pen out of his hand, their hands brush against each other.  

Dean grabs another napkin and starts to scribble aimlessly, and Cas watches him closely as the pen scratches over the napkin.  Dean doodles one stick figure, and then another; spends more time detailing the details of a long muscle car, then goes back and adds some details to the figures.  Shades in dark hair for one of the figures and adds a halo, gives the other a light smattering of freckles, and when he’s done he carefully writes _Dean_ next to one figure and _Cas_ next to the other, and finally passes the napkin to Cas, who examins it intently.

“Whatcha think?” he asks.

“You’re very creative,” Cas says finally.  He's running his fingers around the edges of the napkin, brushing the tips of his fingers across the inked figures.  

“Naw,” Dean protests.  “That’s just you and me," he says, and then their waitress is leaning her hip against the table, setting their plates down amidst the paper fragments and tic-tac-toe'ed napkins, and Cas snatches the drawn-upon napkin out of her path.

"A microcosm," Cas muses,  peeling back the bun and removing the pickles from his burger, banishing them disdainfully to the edge of his plate.  "Small worlds.  Objects inside other objects."

"Dude, you cannot get existential over a friggin' sandwich," Dean tells him, watching Cas slowly dismantle his burger.  "Didn’t anyone tell you not to play with your food?” 

Cas doesn’t even blink.  “No,” he says, and adjusts the ketchup-to-mustard ratio surrounding his onions.

“Anything else?” their waitress asks Cas when she returns, but he just shakes his head, and when she leaves Dean leans across the table and asks him plaintively, “Don't I get pie?  All good things end with  _pie._ "

Cas laughs at that, soundlessly as usual, amused in the safety behind his coffee cup. "Maybe on the second date," he says, and Dean's stomach does a number of abrupt flip-flops.

And he doesn't want to go, doesn't want to leave behind the dim lighting of their booth or Cas's quiet smile across the table, doesn't want to leave the peace and stillness of this moment and sometimes it’s draining, sometimes it’s almost exhausting, trying to pretend this life with Cas isn’t everything he’s ever wanted, how just fucking _nice_ it is to have someone who wants to be here with him, someone to eat dinner with and play pool with and spend nights watching television with, someone who’s here on earth for any number of reasons, but maybe also because in some small way he wants to be here, with Dean.

"I'll be right back," he says to Cas, sliding his legs across the booth, standing up.  "Don't go anywhere."

"Of course not," Cas says, but he's fallen asleep when Dean returns from the restroom, slumped over his plate with head in his hands, elbows propped up on the table and dangerously close to knocking over his water.

And it reminds Dean of another time when he’d watched Cas sleep, only a few months ago, how on one September evening he'd come home late to find Cas asleep on the couch, and how he hadn't been able to move for a long time, too busy memorizing the way Cas curls into himself when he sleeps.  

And how Dean had knelt on the floor beside him, how he'd pushed back the hair off Cas's face so he could gently kiss his forehead.  Six years, he'd said softly to Cas, then, quiet enough to keep him from waking.  Six years, and I never once said thank you, Cas.  Well, I'm saying it now.

And Dean always feels like something’s waiting, coiled around the back of his tongue, waiting for the chance to spill out, but those words can wait, he knows; he’ll wait as long as it takes for Cas to come around, and it almost takes his breath away, remembering a time when just _being_ with Cas wasn't a damned good reason for getting up in the morning.

"I don't know why you stayed," he says now to Cas, even though he's asleep.  "But I'm glad you did," he whispers, and finally touches Cas carefully on the shoulder.

He shakes Cas’s shoulder gently, and finally Cas opens his eyes.  “Come on, buddy,” Dean says to him.  “Time to go.  I’ll drive home.”  

“Was that a good date?” Cas asks, rubbing at his eyes.  “I didn’t mean to fall asleep,” he says.  “I was having a nice time.”

“Me too,” Dean says.  “You’re a good date, Cas.”

“Let’s do it again,” Cas says, and Dean knows Cas loves him, knows it deep in his heart and down in the very marrow of his bones, but there’s a difference between loving someone and sharing a life with someone, and while Dean isn't sure that Cas realizes the difference yet, there’s something in the way Cas looks at him sometimes that makes him think Cas just might be learning, that Cas just might be falling in love with Dean all over again, over cheap beers and rebuilt engines and burgers for dinner.

“You got it," Dean says.  "You better walk me to the door," he says, joking, but Cas nods, digs through his pockets, pulling out a fistful of bills and stacking them neatly on the counter, and he holds the door open for Dean as they  walk out of the diner.

Dean starts the ignition, adjusts the rearview mirror, lets his eyes flicker across the bench seat.  

Cas leans back in the passenger seat, lets his head cant towards his window, rests his forehead against the cold glass, and it’s not an earth-shattering happiness Dean feels in moments like these; it's nothing but a simple sort of peace, and contentment, and of having every part put back in its rightful place.

“You gonna kiss me goodnight?” Dean asks gruffly, but Cas’s eyes are already shut.  


End file.
